Since my last build there have been a couple of unpublished attempts at hacks - UD-8 & 9 - but for various reasons they were scrapped and the project restarted at UtterDisbelief X

The journey up to El Capitan has been trying to say the least. I really envy those builders who have had apparently easy rides. Mine has been bumpy all the way. Indeed a couple of wheels fell off on the journey!

Firstly, the hardware went together easily enough and initially featured an ASUS Z97M-Plus motherboard. I’d bought it because their H97M-Plus I’d used earlier had performed brilliantly once I’d moved boot to EFI (it wouldn’t boot a GUID drive). As an upgrade I wanted to use faster 1867mhz RAM and needed the Z97 chipset to do that. Research lead me to believe this board would boot GUID without problem.

The EVGA graphics-card this time was a departure from my usual Gigabyte choice, but is broadly the same, and cost £10/$15 less. It’s listed in the buyers-guide too. I was pleased by how well made and quiet it is. It is also a little shorter making more room in the case to route its power cable.

Checking the forums here on Tonymacx86 showed a few people singing the praises of the later ASUS board and it’s easy hacking. However, for me, it simply would not boot a GUID drive unaided. I tried so many BIOS tweaks, re-installed, reformatted and learned more Terminal commands than any sane person should be expected to. Simply put the board would not boot without a UniBeast stick. (For any ASUS adopters I should state my board was a Revision 2.0 model.)

Swapping to a Gigabyte Z97M-D3H board was easy as it is of almost identical spec. and looks very similar. The model I received was the latest Revision 1.1, featuring the better audio capacitors. Happily it didn’t refuse a GUID boot and pretty soon I was installed.

First problem was my mistake. I’d initially formatted the EFI partition as hfs because that is what had been used when creating the UniBeast El Capitan installer. I then did some research, reformatted it to msdos and got a bootable system at last.

Sound was next. I fished out MultiBeast’s ALC892 driver package, installed it and had the sound I needed without any further tweaks. Buoyed-up by the success of my now quick and easy boot, I updated to El Capitan 10.11.1 using the combo installer from Apple’s web-site. Sound disappeared and foolishly, instead of just reinstalling the ALC892 driver package I tried the audio_cloverALC-110 command script. Sadly the warnings it gives when run all came true. I had an unbootable system on restart. To rescue my system I had to reformat EFI, reinstall Clover and the Custom Kexts from the Post Installation package by Tonymacx86. In case of the unforeseen I *had* backed-up my config.plist so I just had to copy it over the new one to regain my serial number and settings etc.

(Yes I had made a Carbon Copy Cloner rescue disk too).

Lesson learned.

So now I have the latest El Capitan up and running. It’s fairly reliable BUT …

No USB 3.0.

Rehabman has produced a scholarly text on the subject and at the time of me writing this it’s on the Tonymacx86 Home page. The problem for me is the only usable 3.0 ports, according to System Report, are 1 & 2 where the keyboard and BT adapter are located. No point putting the keyboard in any other port as port 1 is usually the one needed to gain access to a BIOS at boot time. Ironically Gigabyte specs these as USB 2.0 anyway so maybe this info is just an error in the System Report. All other ports are treated as USB 2.0 by OS X and they won’t recognise a real USB 3.0 device at all. Put a USB 2.0 device in them and they’re fine. USB 3.0 and they are invisible. Only way to use a genuine USB 3.0 device is via a USB 2.0 extension cable. Rehabman’s treatise is a marvellous bit of work but a little too complicated and liable to go wrong for me. I understand it but don’t fancy messing my system again as I did with sound.

So the hack’ is up and reliable, if a little hobbled. I’m not a great fan of Clover but I can see its power and advantages. If Tonymacx86 and MacMan can come up with a new MultiBeast for El Capitan I salute them because I suspect it’s a difficult task! I will certainly use it if I can - especially if it automates solving the USB problem. The downside to Clover is it’s rather “arcane” and you generally have to know a lot more about the detail of what you are doing. Thank goodness for Clover Configurator.

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As an aside: I initially used a “genuine” Broadcomm wifi/BT PCI-e card built for full Continuity and Handoff functionality. I’d used one in a previous build and it worked well. For this though I simply could not get the 5ghz radio working. Bluetooth and 2.4ghz radio were fine. Seems this is another known problem and there are forum posts about it, but sadly nothing I tried worked. My TP-Link Archer card did however give me the 5ghz radio I wanted, just not C&H. Ironically I tried the Broadcomm wifi/BT combo card on a Windows 10 boot and it worked perfectly on all radios. This is such an odd problem because the mini-pci-e card it uses is obviously a genuine Apple pull. What is more the chipset in the TP-Link is clearly a Broadcomm one too because it works fine with the same Apple Bootcamp wireless/BT driver! I decided in the end I’d rather have a 5ghz radio than C&H for the few times I use it.

On the plus side - iMessage and FaceTime are working without any intervention from me. Clearly Clover has handled the necessary. Both were available to me once I'd signed into iCloud during setup.

By changing to a MacPro3,1 system definition I can cure this without further ado, but I prefer to stick with an iMac14,2 definition as it matches the system better.

I've done a fair bit of research into this and can now offer a solution.

It appears to be related to a conflict between the Intel processor graphics and my discrete card.

I changed the GPU to a Gigabyte GT740 OC 2GB GDDR5 card because I initially suspected the EVGA card I'd used to start with. It was innocent. The problem persisted. Both cards were also showing up as "Nvidia Chip Graphics" in System Report, rather than a more accurate description.

Here is a condensed version of what is needed to correct this problem -

Install the latest Nvidia Web Drivers.
This prompts for a Restart but hold off for a moment.
Ensure you have Clover Configurator on your system somewhere
Mount your EFI partition using EFI Mounter v3 and navigate to the config.plist, right-click and open with Clover Configurator.
Go to the Graphics section and un-tick the InjectIntel option. This has been set by the El Capitan Clover install as it is a sensible option to get a bootable device, but I don't need it now.
Restart the PC
Go into BIOS before it goes to Clover and Disable the Intel Graphics.
On Restart I can Boot to the desktop without a glitch.
Checking System Report now shows proper GT740 OC info.

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Video playback now works properly

This also makes me think that Apple has deprecated support for the 740 chipset as I for one now need the Nvidia drivers to ensure compatibility. If I try to boot to discrete Graphics only without installing their drivers I get a hanging loop at the boot handover to GPU screen.

You'll notice that the memory speed is wrong in System Report. I've tried many ways to correct this but not managed it yet. I notice a fair few other builders have the same artefact. I've stopped meddling now because on my last attempt I ended up with a machine that would not boot. BIOS still reports the speed correctly so it may just be a visual glitch or something more deep. Either way I can let it lie.

Lastly I followed Stork's excellent advice about how to increase USB port numbers to cope with full USB 3.0 connections.

Rehabman has also made installing the USB 3.0 driver much easier with a single kext ( USBInjectAll.kext ) and this re-enables the ports very nicely. If you find, as I did, that KextBeast will not work for you then use the Terminal command instead -

Open config.plist from the EFI/CLOVER directory but with TextEdit this time and search for "Patch" - it should be the 2nd one in. Insert his code, save and reboot.

I'm still testing but most things work on this build now. At first Sound was gone after Wake from Sleep . A common problem. So I simply installed Rehabman's CodecCommander.kext from the 22nd November 2015 Release. For me this needed to go in the /System/Library/Extensions folder, NOT the /Library/Extensions one. I used the earlier Terminal script modified for the new location etc.

By changing to a MacPro3,1 system definition I can cure this without further ado, but I prefer to stick with an iMac14,2 definition as it matches the system better.

I've done a fair bit of research into this and can now offer a solution.

It appears to be related to a conflict between the Intel processor graphics and my discrete card.

I changed the GPU to a Gigabyte GT740 OC 2GB GDDR5 card because I initially suspected the EVGA card I'd used to start with. It was innocent. The problem persisted. Both cards were also showing up as "Nvidia Chip Graphics" in System Report, rather than a more accurate description.

Here is a condensed version of what is needed to correct this problem -

Install the latest Nvidia Web Drivers.
This prompts for a Restart but hold off for a moment.
Ensure you have Clover Configurator on your system somewhere
Mount your EFI partition using EFI Mounter v3 and navigate to the config.plist, right-click and open with Clover Configurator.
Go to the Graphics section and un-tick the InjectIntel option. This has been set by the El Capitan Clover install as it is a sensible option to get a bootable device, but I don't need it now.
Restart the PC
Go into BIOS before it goes to Clover and Disable the Intel Graphics.
On Restart I can Boot to the desktop without a glitch.
Checking System Report now shows proper GT740 OC info.

This also makes me think that Apple has deprecated support for the 740 chipset as I for one now need the Nvidia drivers to ensure compatibility. If I try to boot to discrete Graphics only without installing their drivers I get a hanging loop at the boot handover to GPU screen.

You'll notice that the memory speed is wrong in System Report. I've tried many ways to correct this but not managed it yet. I notice a fair few other builders have the same artefact. I've stopped meddling now because on my last attempt I ended up with a machine that would not boot. BIOS still reports the speed correctly so it may just be a visual glitch or something more deep. Either way I can let it lie.

Lastly I followed Stork's excellent advice about how to increase USB port numbers to cope with full USB 3.0 connections.

Rehabman has also made installing the USB 3.0 driver much easier with a single kext ( USBInjectAll.kext ) and this re-enables the ports very nicely. If you find, as I did, that KextBeast will not work for you then use the Terminal command instead -

Open config.plist from the EFI/CLOVER directory but with TextEdit this time and search for "Patch" - it should be the 2nd one in. Insert his code, save and reboot.

I'm still testing but most things work on this build now. At first Sound was gone after Wake from Sleep . A common problem. So I simply installed Rehabman's CodecCommander.kext from the 22nd November 2015 Release. For me this needed to go in the /System/Library/Extensions folder, NOT the /Library/Extensions one. I used the earlier Terminal script modified for the new location etc.

You don't say which System Definition you are using but if you are on anything other than MacPro3,1 try that one first. If it solves the problem, as it did for me, then to use any other definition you will probably need to try my work-around.

Certainly disabling the onboard graphics will not harm the computer, but you do need to make some changes to get a reliable system boot.

My view was that most genuine Apple Macs have a single graphics chip and having two is just confusion waiting to happen

I had to do the following to get everything booting reliably (and it is - I'm using the Hack right now ...)

Back-up your Clover config.plist. Easiest way is to open it in Textedit and then chose the Duplicate menu command to make a copy in the same directory.

1) Install latest Nvidia web graphic drivers (the Nvidia System Preferences pane will let you uninstall later if you need to, and restore the old graphics kexts).

2) Run Clover Configurator and un-tick the InjectIntel option in the Graphics section.

3) Reboot and go straight into BIOS and disable the onboard graphics. Then reboot.

In my experience there is a second or two of hesitation after the Clover OS X boot progress-bar moves under the white Apple logo, before the desktop appears. (When booting using both graphics enabled you could see the brief flash of a second progress-bar at the bottom-left of the screen as the system initialises the discrete graphics instead of Intel's)

If you get a black screen or repeating mouse-pointer/progress-dial artefact go back into BIOS and re-enable the onboard graphics to get back into your system etc.

As for performance, I notice the Intel i3 runs slightly cooler - which makes sense as a part of it is not running under stress and so not generating heat. The GT740 is running between 25-27-degrees most of the time. I don't play many graphic-intensive games so can't quote any frame-rates or benchmarks. The system was completely stable and reliable on just the Intel HD4600 graphics, but the CPU was running at higher temps. The GT740 gives more power all round and running dedicated GDDR5 memory should, at the very least, make an improvement over CPU graphics and DDR3 RAM. A discrete card doesn't make much difference in web browsing and word-processing, but helps apps like Google Earth and movie players considerably.